Social Media Monitoring & Measurement

For a time it was enough to analyze social media content using an adapted version of our content analysis method we use for traditional media. As social media has evolved, so has our thinking. We recognize that, increasingly, an adaptation of our traditional content analysis method will only be part of the solution. Social media measurement is vastly different and requires a commensurately unique approach.

Our view is that social media measurement should:

1. combine several approaches, and
2. be flexible enough to account for different objectives and campaign types

We think a method should include/account for the seven Cs:

• Counting  (site & search metrics)
• Content  (analysis)
• Conversations
• Cohesion  (Are folks agreeing with you?  Your position?  Are they agreeing with each other?)
• Community (Are folks coalescing/mobilizing around or advocating a core theme or issue?)
• Connectedness  (How inter-connected, inter-related is your audience?  Engaged?  Authoritative?  Inlfluential?  Centrally located in the network?)
• Conversion (Did you move them toward some tangible outcome?)

There are numerous social media monitoring providers out there who, in focusing more on monitoring than measurement, provide pieces of the above to varying degrees. We’ve reviewed four dozen of them.  We’ve worked with several of the leading providers. Many of our clients have pre-existing relationships with one or several social media monitoring providers. Increasingly those clients are looking to CARMA to make things simpler by integrating traditional and social media content  analysis, by offering a single, integrated solution with integrated reporting but based on an appropriately different method.  

In working with multiple vendors thus far, CARMA has, in a sense, been agnostic. We will continue to do that in cases where clients or prospects have a particular and pre-existing vendor relationship.  However, CARMA also has strategic relationships with prefered vendors. 

Contact Sonia LaFountain slafountain@carma.com 202.370.1940.